Horse Stall Coop (In the Making)

So I have looked and looked for pictures of converted stalls to coops and haven't found a ton of great pictures for ideas.

I have a big coop in one area with an attached run (on the other side of the property from the horse barn). Hubby and I
(mostly me ) decided we needed some chickens to be down in the barn to clean up the left over horse feed and to kick around the muck pile and eat bugs. So the project of converting one of the 4 stalls we have to a chicken coop began. The stall is essentially 8x10. I plan on trying to model it after my current coop because that layout is working beautifully for me.

Any suggestions and pictures would be great. I haven't done too much on it yet but I am hoping to have it done with in a month or so. I am planning on the chicks staying in the stall until they are plenty big enough to free range safely. I only plan on letting them free range when we are home (one of us almost always is) and it would be for probably a minimum of 6 hours of free ranging time.

Some other important plans:
-I will cover the window with hardware cloth and make some shutters so i can shut it if need be.
-I have hardware cloth to put over the opening in the stall door too
-I am going to cover the top of the stall, but whats best? Fencing? Wood? Not sure yet. That's last on the list.

Here's some pictures of the rough start. It had pallets on the floor from hay, but the actual floor is cement. I plan on using sand for bedding.





And then here's the barn. It's going to be in the second stall with the opening in the door. The first is my tack room, then will be the chickens


Thoughts?

In the winter we convert one of our horse stalls into a chicken coop to make it easier to access my chickens. We just put down a lot of hay and some hay bales for them to lay on. We also put an old playground ladder across two bales for them to roost on. For their feed and water on we just have those on a pallet. Hope this information was helpful.

If I were doing this, I would run hardware cloth over the area mainly to protect them at night in case a raccoon or weasel slipped into the barn. I don't think a solid ceiling would be necessary. I can see benefits to the additional ventilation of a coop contained within a barn as well.

We lock up our barn at night and don't have any problems with raccoons or weasels normally, but we would put a mesh netting over the top so they couldn't fly out. We even have cats in the barn and they don't bother them at all. The kitties though will occasionally sneak in with me but there more afraid of the chickens then the chickens are afraid of them. Well hope your project turns out good.

ok! thanks for the replies. Something covering the top is a must as we do have raccoons in the barn occasionally because we leave cat food out for our barn cats so it has to be a secure coop. I thought about running 2x4's over the top like a foot or so apart and then putting hardware cloth over that. That way there's plenty of ventilation but still secure

Thats just what I would do if I had a spare horse stall. (Hell I wish I still had any horse stalls). You'll need a light somewhere. I'd mount it to a wall. I'd run a couple outlets too. I imagine you're planning on that. Hardware cloth over the open area. What are you planning for bedding. I'd cover or treat the wood before putting any dirt down. Personally I think shavings are ridiculously expensive. I find dried grass clippings from the summer before work great. Maybe an automatic door. You can have a really nice set up in there.

saraiquimby1 said:

ok! thanks for the replies. Something covering the top is a must as we do have raccoons in the barn occasionally because we leave cat food out for our barn cats so it has to be a secure coop. I thought about running 2x4's over the top like a foot or so apart and then putting hardware cloth over that. That way there's plenty of ventilation but still secure

Click to expand...

You could even use 2x2's, that's what I did.....built the whole coop with 2x2 framing and hardware cloth inside large shed.
Check out My Coop page for pics.

ETA: Have you thought about the dust the chickens will generate and is that a problem in your barn?
I only mention it because someone else was thinking of using a stall in horse barn for chooks and could not live with the dust.

I probably wouldn't just because of the dust factor. Your tack and supplies will be coated in no time. Put the poop pile as close to the existing coop as you can even enclose it for 24/7 access to reduce feed costs. If your chickens know that there is feed to be cleaned up in the barn, they will bee line down there on their own.

Ours don't like being cooped up at all, but they free range too. Wouldn't recommend this without really good protection for the hens though. We have the drake that raised our first hens that is still playing the proud over protective daddy, and 2 roosters that don't like their hens being upset.

They have a coop but don't like being shut in and stay in an open horse stall so we finally gave up and let them. We added hay bales on 2 sides to block the worst of the draft and buried an old wood tool box with holes cut in them for the hens and several perches. They wintered over fine just got a lot of down. We didn't loose a single chicken but a couple would be predators haven't come back not sure if they met their demise or decided wasn't worth the butt kicking they got.

We have a clamped light outside of the stall so to not bother the chickens but we can see if something is out there on a dusk to dawn timer.

Stall is cleaned daily though too and every couple of weeks a really deep cleaning, to help keep everything to tolerable, so if you don't have the time to do that wouldn't recommend it

aart said:

You could even use 2x2's, that's what I did.....built the whole coop with 2x2 framing and hardware cloth inside large shed.
Check out My Coop page for pics.

ETA: Have you thought about the dust the chickens will generate and is that a problem in your barn?
I only mention it because someone else was thinking of using a stall in horse barn for chooks and could not live with the dust.

Click to expand...

I have and it's not a problem. The horses only come in when we are tacking them up before a ride, and it's not for very long. The barn is dusty anyway from the hay and such. It won't be a problem.